


Wake Up Call

by alessandralee



Category: Scorpion (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Neighbors, Baking, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-04
Updated: 2015-04-04
Packaged: 2018-03-21 04:00:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3676584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Megan wants to do is sleep in, but her downstairs neighbor's alarm keeps going off. So she decides to give him a piece of her mind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wake Up Call

Megan’s plans for that morning included one thing and one thing only: sleep. Officially, she was aiming for a 12:30 wake up, but it had been a long week if doctor’s appointments (and two surprise visits from her well-meaning, but overbearing younger brother) so she’d set the alarm on her phone for 3PM, just to make sure things didn’t get too ridiculous.

(She hadn’t done that since college, but after two conversations with Walter about her potentially moving into a community care facility, she’d earned it.)

But apparently she’s going to settle for 10 in the morning.

The first time she hears the beeping, she groans and rolls over in her bed. It’s not loud enough to becoming from anywhere in her own apartment, so she’s only concerned with it stopping so she can go back to sleep.

It does and she manages to doze off for about 90 seconds before it begins again. This time she throws a pillow across the room in frustration, nearly taking out the empty water glass sitting on her dresser in the process. She’s now awake enough to determine that the sound is coming from the apartment below hers.

The third time the beeping starts, she gives up all hope of going back to sleep. She mentally curses her neighbor before deciding that mental death threats aren’t enough. She’s going to go downstairs and give the guy a piece of her mind.

Tossing the covers aside, Megan slides to the end of her bed, steps into her slippers and grabs her crutches. She doesn’t even think about the possibility of changing out of her pajamas first, the exhaustion has her too angry to bother.

Apartment 108 is just a quick elevator ride away. Megan quickly notices that there’s a slight burning smell coming from the other side of the door, so she assumes that the apartment belongs to one of the few college students she’s seen in the basement laundry room. She’s probably smelling the remains of last night’s burnt popcorn or grilled cheese or something.

If Apartment 108 belongs to a college kid, then that probably means the beeping is the sound of an extreme snooze button enthusiast. Hopefully whoever it is will be easy to intimidate into having a little more courtesy.

Just before she knocks on the door, she hears a loud metallic thump. Maybe the apartment also belongs to someone who’s also prone to falling out of bed. It’s a long shot, but it’s the most reasonable theory she can come up with.

She knocks anyway, and immediately hears the sound of approaching footsteps.

“Can I help you?” a muffled voice asks from within the apartment. The door stays closed tightly. 

“Yeah, I live right above you,” Megan explains, hoping she’s speaking loud enough for whoever’s behind the door to hear. “There’s some alarm going off in your apartment and I’m trying to sleep.”

She can hear the click of lock being undone and the door is pulled widely open to reveal a man in a Super Fun Guy t-shirt. He looks like he could maybe be in college, but more likely he’s a grad student. He’s about a foot taller than her, with glasses and dark hair that curly messily. Also, he looks a little flustered, like maybe she’s scared him a bit with her comments about his alarm.

“I’m so sorry,” the stranger begins, “I didn’t realize the sound traveled that easily. I’ll watch the oven buzzer more closely from now on.”

His enthusiastic apology is not at all what Megan was expecting. She’d been anticipating an angry brush off, and at least a snide comment followed by sudden awkwardness when he noticed her crutches.

“Okay…” she trails off, unsure what to say next.

“You see, my friend Paige is coming over later with her son Ralph, and I thought I’d try to bake cookies for an after lunch snack,” he launches into a detailed explanation, clearly not bothered by Megan’s own awkwardness, “but as it turned out, baking is definitely not my strong suit, not that I didn’t know that already. First they were undercooked, then two minutes later they’d all burnt.”

He’s definitely still flustered, but Megan’s now pretty certain that has less to do with her showing up at his door and more to do with the burnt cookies she can see lying on the stovetop behind his right shoulder.

It’s sweet though, the thought of him trying to bake cookies for his friend’s son, and despite her missing hours of sleep, Megan starts to feel a little cheerier.

“You know, I’m a pretty good baker,” she offers. It’s not the truest thing she’s ever said, but she can definitely make some sugar cookies. If you have any more ingredients, I could give you a hand.”

The stranger smiles widely at her, and opens the door all the way to let her in.

“That would be fantastic,” he says. “I’m Sylvester, by the way.”

“Megan,” she offers as she enters the apartment. Sylvester follows her into the kitchen.

As far as Megan can tell, there are enough ingredients here for at least six batches off cookies.

“I’m not good at baking,” Sylvester explains again when he catching her eying his two giant bags of flour suspiciously. “Statistically, I pretty much guaranteed to ruin at least four batches before I got it right.”

“Statistically?” Megan asks.

“I’m a statistician,” he tells her, “professionally. At least I am these days.”

“And you ran a statistically analysis on your own baking skills?” she can’t help but be amused by the thought. It almost sounds like something her brother Walter would do, if he were the type of person to bake cookies. Or if he were the type of person to admit failing a few times before getting things right.

“The exact math indicated four point two two six batches ruined by over cooking, not greasing the cookie sheet or incorrectly mixing ingredients,” Sylvester tells her. “I can do the math in my head. I’d probably have been better off buying the cookies right from the store.”

“Yet you still went for home made,” Megan says. “Where’s your recipe.”

He hands her a typed sheet of paper that reads ‘Paige’s Super Easy Sugar Cookie Recipe (For Sly).’

“My friend Toby is a psychiatrist,” Sylvester admits, which seems like an segue at first, but then he continues, “He said I would benefit from stepping out of my comfort zone and trying new things. This time he was trying to get me to go to some bar with him, but baking sounded like an easier first step.”

Megan nods in understanding, and quickly reads the recipe, “Well these seems pretty straightforward, so all we really need to do is pay better attention to the oven.” She reaches for a bowl and the bag of flour Sylvester already has open. “Just hand me the one cup measuring cup and we can get started.”

“Could you wash your hands first?” Sylvester asks, once again flustered and holding the measuring cup protectively against his chest.

Megan shrugs, “Sure,” then rests her crutches against the kitchen counter so she can wash her hands. When she rejoins Sylvester at the table she asks, “Do you have any food coloring? I thought we could dye the frosting different colors.”

The nervous tension is Sylvester’s shoulders drops and he jokes, “Don’t get ahead of yourself. I’ve still got another 3.226 batches of cookies to destroy.”

“I think you’ll find I improve your stats a lot,” Megan teases back, reaching to take the measuring cup out of his hands. This time he hands it over willingly.


End file.
